Left to suffer as the absurd last bastion of Empire

May 11 -- the very day that saw the closing of the special UN conference

designed to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, when 178 nations

agreed to an indefinite extension of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

While our representatives were signing this treaty committing Britain

to reducing our nuclear arsenal, we were busy increasing our stockpile

by another 10 warheads.

By the NPT, nations without nuclear weapons agree to renounce these in

perpetuity, while as a quid pro quo, under Article VI, the five declared

nuclear powers commit themselves to reduction and eventually elimination

of all their nuclear weapons.

Although both the US and Russia have made substantial cuts in their

nuclear stockpile, the UK continues to press ahead with Trident, which

in terms of technical efficiency -- range, accuracy, lethality -- is

undeniably a massive increase.

Indeed, this is freely acknowledged by the House of Commons Select

Commitee on Defence, which described Trident as ''a significant

enhancement of the UK's nuclear capability''. This description flatly

contradicts Malcolm Rifkind's oft-repeated claim that it is a ''minimum

deterrent''.

The Defence Committee's appraisal is vindicated by any honest

consideration of the facts. Every eight days one more Trident warhead

comes off the production line. While there were -- and are -- around 100

Polaris warheads, the total of operational Trident warheads is to be

300. These have a much longer range and can hit six times as many

targets. Each warhead has 100 kilotons of killing power, ie, it is eight

times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, where the final

death toll was 200,000 . . . And there are 96 warheads on each

submarine, ready to be launched at 15 minutes' notice.

The sheer enormity of indiscriminate slaughter on this scale surpasses

all human imagination. How can we comprehend eight Hiroshimas, when we

can never grasp the horror of one? Trident is the worst thing in the

world; worse even than Rwanda, Belsen or Hiroshima. It is the epiphany

of absolute malevolence.

However, what I wish to focus on here is not the moral or technical

aspects of Trident but the broader question of its impact on this

country's political and economic life. In Scotland, at Coulport, we have

the largest arsenal of nuclear bombs in Europe. We also have what is

probably the largest store of conventional explosives -- 27,000 tons of

it -- in the NATO arms dump in Glen Douglas. Because material has been

transferred here from Germany since the collapse of the USSR and

reunification, there is now more here than at the height of the cold

war.

When all the old free-fall (WE-177) bombs are withdrawn from service

in 1998, Britain's entire nuclear arsenal will be stored here in

Scotland. And when the Trident submarines are past their ''use by''

date, you can guess where the radioactive hulks will be dumped.

It is Scotland also that has to suffer the noise and environmental

damage caused by low-flying aircraft. With the exception of a very small

area in the north of England and in Wales, all UK ultra-low flying zones

are in the Borders and the North-west Highlands. Whatever role low

flying played in the last war, the advance in hi-tech anti-aircraft

weaponry makes it an unusable tactic in modern warfare. Experience in

the Gulf War and the Falklands show this clearly.

What we see in all these instances is the increasing militarisation of

our land and economy and a growing polarisation of political reactions

in Scotland. Scotland is looking more and more like the absurd last

bastion of Empire. While Britain seems incapable of finding her role in

Europe, and clings to Trident as a totem of former imperial status, we

are the ones who have to suffer the consequences.

All this is increasingly seen as morally intolerable, and a distortion

of normal political and economic life in Scotland. All sections of

Scottish society have expressed their repugnance at the imposition of

Trident. Opinion polls show that 75% of the population of Scotland do

not want Trident. Leading figures in academic and cultural life are

virtually unanimous in their condemnation. The Christian churches have

rejected it, as have representatives of other religions. In its

deliverance of May 20, 1982, the General Assembly of the Church of

Scotland ''renounced the use of nuclear power for war-like purposes''.

In an Easter statement of the same year, the Catholic bishops of

Scotland were equally forthright; ''if it is immoral to use these

weapons, it is immoral to threaten their use''.

The two largest political parties reflect this national mood. The

Scottish Labour Party rejects Trident. Unfortunately, it has the problem

of being tied to the policies of the British party, and its promised

parliament would still leave us with Trident. The SNP is committed to

scrapping Trident.

I believe there can be no more potent a symbol of the lack of genuine

democracy in Scotland than this obscene monster wallowing in the

polluted waters of the Gareloch, with the wasted landscape of Coulport

and Faslane a tragic backdrop.

On May 12, when President Clinton was in Kiev, he praised the Ukraine

for giving up nuclear weapons. ''Your nation can claim responsibility

for a major contribution to world peace . . . your wise decision to

eliminate nuclear weapons on your territory has earned your nation

respect and gratitude everywhere in the world.'' Why should this same

logic not apply here? What is sauce for the Ukrainian goose is sauce for

the Scottish gander. The excuses the UK Goverment makes -- we live in a

dangerous and unstable world, fears of a revived Russia etc -- could

equally be made by the Ukraine with even more credibility. They, after

all, share a common frontier with Russia.

Britain evidently sees herself as excluded from the moral restraints

demanded of all other states. The assumption is that we can be trusted

to have H-bombs, but they cannot. This is our thermonuclear White Man's

Burden, an atomic birthright bestowed on ''Great'' Britain but forever

forbidden to lesser breeds. At the heart of British nuclear delusions

there lies an unacknowledged and unarticulated racism, the most

repellent legacy of our imperial past.

* Brian Quail is Joint Secretary of Scottish CND.